Texas Bar Exam results for Texas Law Schools

The results of the February 2006 Texas Bar Exam for the first-time takers from Texas law schools are as follows:

1. Baylor 97% of their class passed2. UT 92% of their class passed3. SMU 89% of their class passed4. Tex Wes 83% of their class passed5. St. Mary's 81% of their class passed6. U of Houston 79% of their class passed7. South Texas 78% of their class passed8. Tex. Southern 77% of their class passed9. Texas Tech 74% of their class passed

The results of the February 2006 Texas Bar Exam for the first-time takers from Texas law schools are as follows:

1. Baylor 97% of their class passed2. UT 92% of their class passed3. SMU 89% of their class passed4. Tex Wes 83% of their class passed5. St. Mary's 81% of their class passed6. U of Houston 79% of their class passed7. South Texas 78% of their class passed8. Tex. Southern 77% of their class passed9. Texas Tech 74% of their class passed

Left out of that stat is that of the 97% of the Baylor students who passed the Texas bar exam...

...100% had to go to Baylor.

Spending three years in Baylor to pass the bar is like spending ten years in prison to clear your name. Yeah, you're happy you got your name cleared, but you have to think that there's a better way to do it.

By including the "repeaters" with the first-time takers, you can get an "overall" pass rate for a law school, but you have to consider exactly what that number is telling you. Because people can sit for the Texas bar exam five times, the "repeater" number can include people who have been trying to pass the exam for up to five years (if the person is, say, only sitting for one of the two bar exams offered every year after they graduated). And we don't know from the data if there are more repeaters from, say, one graduating class than another. It's probably safe to assume that most "repeaters" in a February exam are by and large people who failed from the previous July, but the exact numbers are not shown on the Texas Board of Law Examiners' website. The "repeaters" are all lumped together. And some people, after they fail the first time, only sit for the July exams thereafter. They do this because some people say that the February exam is slightly more difficult to pass than the July exam.

Also, US News & World Reports lists only the first-time taker number in their publications and it is the first-time taker number that is the factor that goes into their rankings. The ABA is also concerned with the first-time taker number. Kudos to Baylor for being number one.